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Thursday, February 26, 2015

“Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.”
~Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian

“The problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to absolutes of bad and good. In place of manners, we now have doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one’s peril: by means of a considerable circular logic, such offences mark you as reactionary and therefore a bad person. Therefore if you say people are bad, you are bad.”
~Lynne Truss (pictured), in Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door*

“Washington and its fawning presstitutes branded the elected Ukrainian government that was a victim of Washington’s coup, ‘a corrupt dictatorship.’ The replacement government consists of a combination of Washington puppets and neo-nazis with their own military forces sporting Nazi insignias. The American presstitutes have been careful not to notice the Nazi insignias.”
~Paul Craig Roberts

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
~Alvin Toffler

“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle.”
~Ludwig von Mises

Monday, February 23, 2015

Here’s another example of the overuse of the Uninhabited Clause.* Below (in green) is the first paragraph of an article in Slate. The writer uses eight uninhabited clauses and only three inhabited clauses. I have boldfaced the subject and verb in each clause. In blue, I have interspersed my comments:

The great city of St. Louis has a major problem with gun violence.

Non-human subject: city

Even as homicide rates have continued

Non-human subject: rates

to decline elsewhere in the country, they have surged

Non-human subject: they (i.e., rates)

in St. Louis, which last year saw a 33 percent rise in killing, to 159 in a city of 318,000.

Non-human subject: which (i.e., St. Louis)

(Note: this does not include the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson,

Non-human subject: this (the antecedent is ambiguous)

which is in St. Louis County, a separate jurisdiction with 1 million people.)

Non-human subject: which (i.e., Ferguson)

Criminologists point to all the usual reasons for the violence: a thriving drug trade, high unemployment among young men, and so on.

Human subject: Criminologists

But a New York Timesarticle on Tuesday noted

Non-human subject: article

that St. Louis police are contending with a factor that

Human subject: police

their counterparts in many other high-crime cities are not (contending with): exceedingly lax gun laws.

Human subject: counterparts

The Times reports:

Non-human subject: Times

The Takeaway: Unless you are writing about abstract topics such as metaphysics or mathematics, you should strive to include persons in most of your clauses. Otherwise, you risk sounding academic and boring.
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*My coinage, so far as I know.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

The Uninhabited Clause* is a clause that has a non-human subject: a thing or an idea as opposed to a person or group of persons. There is nothing inherently wrong with using uninhabited clauses, but when we use a lot of them, we imply that nothing much is happening. In doing so, we bore and exhaust our readers. They prefer reading about people doing things.

Example

For example, below (in green) are the first three paragraphs of a New York Times article about a rape. The reporters use a lot of uninhabited clauses; in addition, they deliberately weaken several of their inhabited clauses. I have interspersed my specific comments (in blue):

The crime was horrific

Uninhabited.

and the verdict stunningly swift.

Uninhabited.

Two former Vanderbilt University football players are facing the possibility of decades in prison

Inhabited. However, the subjects aren’t doing much; just sitting around waiting to go to prison, where they won’t be doing much either.

after it took a jury less than four hours to convict them

Uninhabited – deviously so. The reporters distort the sentence by using the infinitive mood (“to convict”) so as to evade using the more natural declarative mood (“a jury convicted them in less than four hours”). So even the jury didn’t do much; it didn’t convict – it just “took.” This weasely trick continues the “nobody’s doing much” tone.

for their roles in a 2013 sexual assault of an unconscious woman.

Another distortion; this one is worthy of a shyster lawyer: The reporters use “for their roles in… a sexual assault” to avoid saying “for sexually assaulting.” By doing this, the reporters insinuate that the football players didn’t do much during the assault – they just had “roles.”

Two more former football players await trial.

Inhabited. Again, although there are human beings in this sentence, they are not doing much of anything; they’re just sitting around.

At a time of widespread alarm and almost daily news reports about sexual assaults on college campuses, it is hard to imagine a case more likely than this one, captured on video by the assailants, to mobilize a campus.

Uninhabited.

As if to underscore how pervasive the concerns have become nationally, representatives from 76 Tennessee colleges and universities were holding a conference on the subject here, not far from the courthouse

Inhabited: The subject “representatives” refers to human beings, but the verb is weak: “were holding.” In other words, nobody’s doing much. Just sitting around and expelling hot air.

where Tuesday’s verdict played out.

Uninhabited.

But transformative moments are hard to come by

Uninhabited.

when a community’s population turns over every four years

Technically inhabited, because a community is made up of human beings. But it’s a weak subject of a weak verb. The reporters continue to insinuate that nobody’s doing much.

and its members have a deep investment in its reputation.

Inhabited, because members are human beings. However, notice what verb the reporters use here: to have. This verb and to be are the two weakest verbs in English.

So interviews Tuesday and Wednesday at Vanderbilt brought out horror

Uninhabited – and fiendishly clever. The word “horror” is the first strong word in the article. The reporters, writing about rape – a felony and a heinous crime – have finally, after 166 words, used a strong word. But watch how they immediately weaken it. They don’t quote anyone who says “I recoiled in horror” or “I was horrified.” They just say that “interviews… brought out horror.” The horror just floated around the campus like a fog.

at what had happened

Uninhabited.

and a distinct distance from it. Until the trial began more than two weeks ago, the episode seemed to elicit little sense of urgency

Uninhabited.

— in fact, the student newspaper, The Vanderbilt Hustler, found that

Uninhabited.

many students were not even aware of it.

Inhabited. However, the clause contains the weakest verb in English: to be.

Summary

The reporters seem to be trying to say (and at the same time, trying to avoid saying) that something horrible happened on campus but the students reacted blandly if at all. But the reporters themselves are writing blandly. They can hardly bear to even type a strong word. In fact, they go out of their way – sometimes deviously so – to evade using any strong words.**

This is intellectually dishonest writing. The reporters sound like they are trying to get away with saying as little as they can, while still filling column inches to get paid. They and the editor who approved this piece should hang their heads in shame.

The Takeaway: Unless you are writing about abstract topics such as metaphysics or mathematics, you should strive to include persons in most of your clauses. Otherwise, you risk sounding academic and boring. You may even sound dishonest and therefore untrustworthy. Be aware that many reporters deliberately diminish what they write about. Imitate such writers only if you deliberately intend to diminish what you write about.
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Monday, February 9, 2015

In the last post, I showed three examples of how much you can convey in 100 words or so. Here’s another good example that I just noticed:

Example

In March 1811, during the Peninsular War, British Private William Wheeler of the 51st Light Infantry, fighting under Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (pictured), arrived in Lisbon. In a letter, Private Wheeler described his first impression of the Portuguese people, who were Britain’s allies during that war:

What an ignorant, superstitious, priest-ridden, dirty, lousy set of poor devils are the Portuguese. Without seeing them it is impossible to conceive there exists a people in Europe so debased. The filthiest pigsty is a palace to the filthy houses in this dirty stinking city, all the dirt made in the houses is thrown into the streets, where it remains baking until a storm of rain washes it away. The streets are crowded with half-starved dogs, fat Priests and lousy people. The dogs should all be destroyed, the able-bodied Priests drafted into the Army, half the remainder should be made to keep the city clean, and the remainder if they did not inculcate the necessity of personal cleanliness should be hanged. (121 words) (Source)

Analysis

I don’t think any of us had the slightest difficulty understanding what Private Wheeler thought of his allies. It’s frightening to imagine what he thought of his enemies.

Note that he repeats a couple of words – either intentionally for emphasis, or carelessly, I don’t know.

I suspect you’d have to look far and wide today to find an army private who could write as well as Private Wheeler.

The Takeaway: When we write concisely and don’t waste words on circumlocutions, equivocations, evasions or tangents, we can say a lot in 100 words or so. One technique for writing concisely is to deliberately write an overlong first draft and then keep reducing it. For example, to write a 2000-word article, I typically write a 3000-word first draft. In successive drafts, I cut 500 words, 300 words, 150 words, and 50 words, leaving a concise, 2000-word fifth draft that connects like a sledge hammer. This technique is quicker and easier than it sounds. Try it.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

If you write concisely, you can say a lot in only 100 words or so. Needless to say, you need intelligence, discipline and the courage of your convictions. Here are three examples, ranging from 120 words to 245 words:

Putting aside their brainwashing, their defensiveness and patriotic support of the regime in Washington, Americans need to ask themselves: How is it possible that the government of the United States, an alleged Superpower, is so unaware of its true vulnerabilities that Washington is capable of pushing two real powers [Russia and China] until they have had enough and play the cards that they hold?

Americans need to understand that the only thing exceptional about the US is the ignorance of the population and the stupidity of the government.

What other country would let a handful of Wall Street crooks control its economic and foreign policy, run its central bank and Treasury, and subordinate citizens’ interests to the interests of the one percent’s pocketbook? (Source)

We experienced no hostility toward us; on the contrary. Perhaps, being so young, we were callow or naïve enough not to recognize hostility when we encountered it. My letters home at the time make it clear to me now that I was not then an acute observer or, if I was, had no descriptive powers. What appeared to concern me mostly was my own comfort rather than the world about me: the past is not only another country where they do things differently, but also where one was oneself a different person. When I read my letters of that time, I feel as if I have no connection to, or even sympathy for, the writer of them (though my handwriting has not changed in the meantime). I understand the impulse of many people to burn the letters of the past. One day, those who are now young will hope that the electronic messages of their youth will suffer the degradation of entropy and go the way of all flesh, for there is nothing more to be feared than the perfect record of a life. (Source)

The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now [1870] existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but “the people” then existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves. (Source)

The Takeaway: When we write concisely and don’t waste words on circumlocutions, equivocations, evasions or tangents, we can say a lot in 100 words or so. One technique for writing concisely is to deliberately write an overlong first draft and then keep reducing it. For example, to write a 2000-word article, I typically write a 3000-word first draft. In successive drafts, I cut 500 words, 300 words, 150 words, and 50 words, leaving a concise, 2000-word fifth draft that connects like a sledge hammer. This technique is quicker and easier than it sounds. Try it.

“[I am astonished that my country could] puke up its ancient soul… in five minutes…. God damn the United States for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles!”
~William James, on the invasion of the Philippines